Just before Christmas 1987, Russellville, Arkansas, Ronald Gene Simmons made a conscious decision to kill all the members of his family. On the morning of 22 December he first bludgeoned and shot his son Gene and his long-suffering wife Rebecca; then he strangled his three-year-old daughter Barbara. After having a beer, Simmons dumped the bodies in the cesspit he had made his children dig. Now Simmons sat back and awaited the return of his other children. When they arrived off the bus he said he had presents for them but wanted to give them one at a time. First to receive her ‘gift’ was eldest daughter, seventeen-year-old Loretta, who Simmons strangled and held under the water in the rain barrel. The three other children, Eddy, Marianne and Becky were dispatched in a similarly callous manner.

Around midday on 26 December, the remaining members of the family arrived for their planned Christmas visit; it was to be their last Christmas. The first to die was Simmons’ son Billy and daughter-in-law Renata, both shot dead; then his grandson Trae was strangled and drowned; then daughter Sheila and her husband Dennis McNulty were shot. Ronald Simmons’ child by his own daughter, christened Sylvia Gail, was strangled, and finally grandson Michael. Simmons laid the bodies of his whole family in neat rows in the lounge. All the corpses were covered with coats except that of Sheila, who was laid in state covered by Mrs Simmons’ best tablecloth. The bodies of the two grandsons were wrapped in plastic sheeting and left in abandoned cars at the end of the lane. After popping out for a drink in a local bar Simmons returned to the house and, apparently oblivious of the corpses lined up around him, spent the next two nights and the Sunday drinking beer and watching television.

On the Monday morning Ronald Simmons drove into Russellville and at a law office shot dead a young woman named Kathy Kendrick, who for some reason he blamed for many of his problems. Next stop on his murderous tour was an oil company office where Simmons shot dead a man named J.D Chaffin and wounded the owner. He then drove on to a store where he shot and wounded two more people. Now on to another office where he shot and wounded a woman. And that was the end of his killing spree. Simmons simply sat in the office and chatted to one of the secretaries while waiting for the police. When they arrived he handed over his gun and surrendered without any resistance.

Simmons was charged with sixteen counts of murder, found guilty and sentenced to death. On 31 May Arkansas governor (later president) Bill Clinton signed Simmons execution warrant, and on 25 June 1990 he died, as he had chosen to do, by lethal injection.